The tokens are just aligned signals to communicate between people. So they appeared through bruteforce to enable communications between people. For example in

The tokens are just aligned signals to communicate between people. So they appeared through bruteforce to enable communications between people. For example initially there were species that spewed out tokens randomly, then some of those tokens got assigned to indicate danger, and other members of those species got aligned on that due to natural selection, evolution and neural networks. More complex things got built on top of that due to environmental and survival pressures.